PHILADELPHIA — The National Football League has now gone through its “knockout phase” where each team starts off 0-0, and feels anything is possible.

While the epicenter of power seems to reside in the NFC East, probably one of the more interesting story lines has been the play of the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

Riding the crest of their Super Bowl win, the Giants have been solid in every phase of play. Quarterback Eli Manning has never looked as comfortable behind center as now; (getting that ring will do that for a guy).

Their ground game is a multi-faceted, punishing machine, combining the elements of turf (Brandon Jacobs) wind (Derrick Ward) and fire (Ahmad Bradshaw); and the receiving corps has a great mix of veteran talent (Amani Toomer, David Tyree) a definitive star (Plaxico Burress) and eager youngsters (Steve Smith, Kevin Boss, Dominic Hixon, Sinorice Moss) ready to contribute.

On defense, the season-ending injury to end Osi Umenyiora and retirement of Michael Strahan has accelerated the emergence of lineman Justin Tuck, who is becoming a pit boss and anchor to a formidable front seven.

The job done by general manager Jerry Reese in drafting a team loaded with credible depth is to be applauded and admired; especially at a time where not many teams are all that concerned with winning games as they are making money.

But the one area where this team lacks is humility.

We have spoken before about the Giants’ lack of desire to have Reese speak to us or have anyone from this organization cover their team.

Their reason — we don’t matter; just a buncha guys that can’t affect their bottom line who don’t know anything about football and seek to glom onto seeing some free games.

I can honestly say from what I know of my colleagues, there are least six here (myself included) who have forgotten more football than some of the people covering the NFL.

One representative, a Peter-Jean Baptiste, even made up a story to our CEO, Roland Rogers, about how one of our representatives wanted to “do a story on Donovan McNabb” so he wanted to attend a Giants’ game.

Being that I am a Pro Football Writers of America member in good standing, I voiced our concerns to the group’s hierarchy and tried to work this out within channels.

But, through preseason and six weeks into this season, the bullshit continues.

So the Giants can talk to everyone except BASN; because they choose to, not because we can’t appreciate the style of football they’re playing.

BASN has been called a bunch of very unflattering terms by this organization, something confirmed by PFWA colleagues and they need to know that what comes around will go around.

So enjoy your smugness and disrespect for now.

As my man Teddy Pendergrass said in the song, “Be For Real” – “the same people you meet going up, you meet the same ones on the way back down.”